In conjunction with the exhibition, “Shadow Play,” currently on view at the New Museum and particularly the screening of its centerpiece film, “Fly Paper,” critic at large Hilton Als profiled video artist, Kahlil Joseph for the November 6th issue of The New Yorker. Describing “Fly Paper,” as Joseph’s most personal film to date, Als reviews Joseph’s personal life and artistic background, including his work with Beyoncé for Lemonade and his friendship with cinematographer, Arthur Jafa.

“From the start, Joseph drew on distinctly American and African imagery to produce work in which faces and bodies were the narrative. When he made music videos, the songs were used less to support the visuals than to provide a frame for them to bounce off or dismantle. In “Until the Quiet Comes,” a 2012 piece that he made for the experimental d.j. and musician Flying Lotus—Kara Walker included it in “Ruffneck Constructivists,” a significant show she curated at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, in 2014—we see several of the motifs that Joseph would revisit in “Lemonade”: the suspension and play of time and the fractured narrative, slow, illusory, and true.”

“the suspended aesthetics of Joseph’s film not only critique the specious task of representing blackness, they disrupt the cultural logics that are sustained—literally grounded—by blackness.” Read the full essay here.

Kahlil Joseph: Shadow Play is currently on view at the New Museum and includes the debut of Fly Paper (2017). According to the New Museum website: “Fly Paper is a new film installation that departs from Joseph’s admiration of the work of Roy DeCarava (1919–2009), a photographer and artist known for his images of celebrated jazz musicians and everyday life in Harlem. With Fly Paper, Joseph extends DeCarava’s virtuosity with chiaroscuro effects to the moving image and brings together a range of film and digital footage to contemplate the dimensions of past, present, and future in Harlem and New York City. Joseph’s new film also touches on themes of filiation, influence, and legacy, marking a personal reckoning that intuitively calls upon his connections to the city through his family—and in particular, his late father, whom he cared for in Harlem at the end of his life. Fly Paper’s dynamic yet contemplative mood also builds on Joseph’s sense that layers of lived experience—and stories—are sedimented in the places that have played host to the aspirations and daily lives of countless individuals.” Read more on Shadow Play and Fly Paper here.

liquid blackness also extends its congratulations to Joseph for his recent win of the Film Craft Award for cinematography for Process at the 2017 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.